Category: Sewing

All my sewing adventures

Nappy with gussets

Mum and I had another sewing day today. Our challenge today was to make a nappy with gussets. After combining the wee weka pocket pattern with a few of our ideas and a few online tutorials… this is the result…

The gussets add an extra line of defence against leaking as there are two lines of elastic. It is hard to see in the photo but there is the normal elastic on the leg along with gusset. A booster can sit in between the gussets to either replace the stuffing in the pocket or be combined with the stuffing in the pocket for more absorbancy.

Unfortunately the next photo is a bit blury and the only one I have of the side. If you focus you can see the outer edge along with the inner gusset.

And a photo of the nappy on my adorable godson.

When I get back from webdu, I will post the steps we went through.

Sewing adventures part 2

I had another sewing day today with Mum. We spent more time talking then actually sewing and while it means that we only got two done, we had a lot of fun and that is the main point!

I have been doing more research since our first one and want to thank the wonderful members of nappycino for all the information and answers to my silly (and not so silly) questions.

We stuck to the standard wee weka pocket pattern for the first nappy. It has an inner layer of black fleece, hidden layer of pul and outer layer of printed fleece. We will be making a hoodie jumper to match the nappy.

For our second nappy we tried something a bit different. I wanted to try to make the nappy with two types of absorbancy. Keep the pocket but also add in an insert that clipped to the inside of the nappy. The insert that is clipped to the inside has 1 layer of fleece on the top of 2 layers of bamboo. The insert that is stuffed into the pocket has 4 layers of bamboo. I think it worked but we will have to wait till Sammy tries it.

Putting an absorbant layer on the inside provided a bit of a thought challenge. Putting the snap all the way through was a little pointless because then it wouldn’t be a pocket. Putting the snap just on the inner layer needed reinforcement and this would have to be done before the nappy was sewn.

Before adding the back elastic, we cut out a scrap of material wide enough to support both inner snaps. Put the piece of material slightly under the fold of the casing of the back elastic.

Sew the casing of the back elastic as per normal but just sew the reinforcing into it too.

Then add the snaps. We put the female side of the snap in so that if the inside layer isn’t used then the female snap will not poke baby in the back.

Continue sewing the pattern as per normal and here is the final result..

We also had an interesting experience with the new snap machine, but after a few stupid mistakes we got the hang of it. I’m glad I read the forum post on how to remove snaps once snapped.

Next time we will be making the jumper and some fleece nappies with pul covers. Well it depends on how productive we actually feel 😉

Sewing update

I was just talking to Elizabeth and we have confirmation that the nappy mum and I made didn’t leak! Sammy even decided to test it with a poo.

Mum got a new sewing machine last week and is learning to sew again by pressing all the new buttons. Her other machine is over 30 years old and still going strong minus the light so it is a very new experience for her.

Our snap machine should hopefully be arriving next week.

Sewing adventures

A few weeks (possibly months) ago, I asked mum to teach me to sew again.

I thought we would try with some baby clothes for my godson Samuel. I figure it is more fun when making cute baby stuff and also Samuel won’t complain that something is a little off.

However mum was keen to try making modern cloth nappies, so with a bit of research and a bit of internet shopping, I got everything ordered and printed a wee weka pattern. We spent the morning watching a couple of videos of various parts of the process I had downloaded and then got to making sure we understood all the instructions.

Here is our creation:

This is the nappy without velcro. It is an All in One pocket nappy.

This is the final nappy with velcro. We used velcro for the first nappy and now that we have the hang of what we are doing will get a snap machine for the rest. Velcro is fine for sammy at this stage, but as he gets older I’m guessing he will work out how to pull it off.